Further: Beyond the Threshold (41 page)

“What is it?” I asked.

“These are our new friends, of course,” Maruti said, beaming. “The gestalt—I’ve taken to calling it the ‘Hive,’ and Xerxes had advanced no serious objection, so I suppose we should simply call it the Hive, yes? Well, the Hive from the bacteria network has been transferred from Xerxes’s memory into the
Further
’s computational array.”

I gazed down into the virtual environment and saw indistinct gray shapes moving deep within.

“So that’s them?”

“Exactly. A fairly limited existence, to be sure, but they’ve survived, which is a remarkable achievement. They must have uploaded their minds into the bacteria network as a final resort, turning themselves into little more than messages in a bottle, hoping against hope that they might be rescued. And though it’s taken thousands upon thousands of years, at last they have.”

“What do they think about all of this?”

“Oh, so far as they’re aware, no change at all has occurred. We’re still working out the best way to establish contact with the Hive consciousness, but for the time being, we’ve managed to duplicate the limited environment they’ve existed in all of these years.”

“But we
will
be making contact with them?”

“Absolutely! And in time, we’ll be able to slowly integrate them back into the real world.” He paused and took a sip of his martini. “Assuming, of course, that they haven’t grown to prefer it in there. After all,” he said, flashing me a chimpanzee smile, “I imagine things out here could be a mite too exciting for those not quite as adventurous as you and me, eh, Captain?”

I smiled right back. “You might just be right, Maruti. The world is pretty exciting at times, isn’t it?”

“That it is,” the chimp said with a smile. “And in light of same, can I offer you a drink?”

I shrugged. “Why not? And how about one of those bidis while you’re at it?”

Later, properly lubricated after a few rounds with the chimpanzee, the strong smell of bidi smoke clinging to my hair and clothes, I left Maruti’s quarters and made for the bridge.

Aside from Zel, sitting in the command chair, and the
Further
avatar perched high overhead, the bridge was empty.

“Captain,” Zel said, inclining her head slightly. “I’m glad to see that you’re well.”

“Thanks, First,” I said, stepping down the tiered layers of the bridge to the control center. “I could easily say the same about you.”

Zel shrugged and, reaching up, tapped the sapphire patch over her eye. “I’ve been in worse spots, believe me.”

“You’ll have to tell me about them sometime.” Smiling, I stopped just short of the command chair.

“Perhaps,” Zel said through a slight smile, unmoving. She glanced down at the chair’s arms, at the control center before her, and then sighed deeply before looking up at me.

“I believe you’re in my seat,” I said good-naturedly.

“Oh, I know,” Zel said, waving her hand absently. “I just find, when you vacate it, that it suits me so well.”

I grinned. “Well, you kept the ship in one piece while I was away. I couldn’t ask for more from a second-in-command. Good job.”

“Yes.” Zel nodded languidly. “It was a good job, wasn’t it? And while I wouldn’t have risked using the field inverter, I must admit that it seems to have been the right decision, after all.” She paused, then narrowed her eye and added, “Though it was a stroke of incredible good fortune that your digital friend was in position to save us from the mass launcher strike.”

I shrugged. “We all got lucky. I just hope that our luck doesn’t run out when we need it most.”

“You and me both,” Zel said. Then, reluctantly, she rose to her feet.

Stepping away from the command chair, she motioned toward it.

“I believe this is yours?”

“Thanks, First,” I said, and sat down unceremoniously.

Zel turned and started for the exit.

“Hey, Zel?” I called after her, thoughtfully.

“Yes, Captain Stone?”

“This isn’t the kind of relationship where we start off hating each other and end up romantically involved is it? Are we that clichéd?”

Zel looked surprised and crossed her arms over her chest.

“You…” she began, and then trailed off. “You don’t…?” She shook her head. “I’m sorry, this is just…unexpected. Captain, has no one told you about Pethesileans, then?”

“Um, no?”

“It would appear not,” Zel said, an unfamiliar tone of kindness in her voice. “Captain, we Pethesileans decoupled reproduction from sexual intercourse millennia ago. We’re genetically adapted to be parthenogenic and can reproduce at will. The genetic material can come entirely from the mother or can be taken into the mother’s body from any number of donors and incorporated into the embryo. But we have no fathers, no males—only females.”

“You mean…?”

“You met my mother above Aglibol. Cirea is my isomorphic parent, my sole genetic donor.”

“So, wait, I’m confused. You’re a clone?”

Zel sighed and shook her head. “I’ll try not to be offended by that. I’m a clone in precisely the way that you are the corrupted diploidic copy of the spliced genes of two donors.”

“I…I didn’t…”

Zel smiled, a thin smile that didn’t reach her eye. “Pethesileans are seldom romantically involved, but never for long. And never with males. I’m sorry to disappoint, Captain Stone.”

With that, she turned on her heel and walked out the door.

“But…” I said, trying to object that I’d not actually been propositioning her, but only making a halfhearted joke, but the door closed behind her and the moment was gone.

I sat in silence for a long moment, shaking my head ruefully. Then, sighing, I turned and looked up at the silver eagle perched high on the wall.

“Well,
Further
, I think it’s high time we had a talk, don’t you?”

“What do you mean, Captain Stone?”

“I mean,
Further
, that I’d like an answer.”

I swiveled around in the command chair, propping my feet up on the surface of the control center.

“An answer?”

I crossed my arms over my chest, but kept silent.

“An answer to what?”

“Well,” I said, “to the question that hasn’t been asked but that shouldn’t
need
to be asked.”

The silver eagle cocked its head to one side and regarded me for a moment.

“You want to know why, then?”

“Yes,” I said. “Now, I don’t believe that the Plenum created me out of whole cloth, like Zel suspects. I believe that I’m Ramachandra Jason Stone. I
have
to believe that, I think, or I’d go a little crazy. But what I can’t figure out is why I’m not just a museum piece or a relic in someone’s personal menagerie of oddities. I’m a pretty capable and clever guy, sure, but I don’t kid myself that I’m the best qualified to command the most expensive ship ever made, with the fortunes of untold numbers of Entelechy citizens in his hands.”

“No,” the
Further
said simply. “You’re not.” It paused, and after a moment, added, “At least, not if the only consideration were the cost of the ship or the fortunes of Entelechy citizens—not fortunes in terms of profit and loss, at any rate. When discussing the fortunes of the Entelechy as a whole, though, in perhaps a less tangible but much more meaningful sense, then I would argue that you are, in fact, the
perfect
being for the job.”

I narrowed my eyes and slid my feet down to the floor. Leaning forward over the control center, my palms flat on its surface, I stared up at the avatar. “And why is that?”

“Because, Captain Stone, you bring a unique perspective. You are the product of an era of exploration and discovery to rival any in human history. The century of your birth, while plagued with ills and corruption, was at the same moment one of the high watermarks of human achievement. In the span of a few dozen decades before your birth, humanity learned more about the world around them than in all of human history to that point combined, expanding the bounds of knowledge and understanding from the quantum to the cosmic. You threw off the shackles of irrationality and mysticism, and brought to bear the penetrating light of human reason. Everything that is best and brightest about the Human Entelechy, every technology and science and art and craft, has its origins in your era. But the humans of the current era, the inheritors of this wealth of greatness, have become too complacent, too comfortable in their utopian splendor. They motivate themselves to explore the heavens only in search of profit, or proof of their pet theories and beliefs, or for a thousand other selfish motives. Of them all, only
you
, Captain Stone, have come out here into the uncharted blackness of space simply because you
can
.”

I took a deep breath, soaking in all it had said.

“And that’s why the Plenum chose me to represent its interests on the ship? I don’t get it. Why the cost? Why the expense? What does the Plenum have to gain?”

“The future, Captain. You are our insurance against stagnation and decay. The Entelechy, for all its size and variation, has become increasingly insular, an endogamic superculture. Though it may take millions of years, in time that isolation will lead to the same ills found in primitive cultures when a genetic pool was too small to sustain itself. Defect, decay, and death. In the time of the Diaspora, countless offshoots of humanity spread throughout the stars. The future health of humanity in all of its guises—biological and synthetic, corporeal and digital—depends on the intermarriage, if you will, of these disparate human branches. The Plenum projects that for every new culture that is brought back into contact, the Entelechy gains another few millennia of health and vibrancy, if not more. But without an infusion of new concepts and new ideas, it is only a matter of time before the Entelechy collapses in on itself, decaying from within.”

“And you threw in with the
Further
fund and manipulated me into becoming the ship’s captain…”

“Because you had nothing to lose, and we had everything to gain.”

I found Xerxes in the Atrium, the domed ceiling overhead displaying a true-color image of the hull’s exterior view.

“May I join you?”

Xerxes waved absently to the bench beside em, eir eyeless face lifted, watching birds wheel high overhead.

“Sorry you didn’t find your extraterrestrials, Xerxes,” I said, sitting.

“It was an unlikely outcome.” Ey made a noise almost like a sigh, though for my benefit or eir own, I wasn’t sure. “It always is, I suppose. But there’s still the hope that our next destination may prove more fruitful.” Ey paused, and then said, “What is our next destination, for that matter?”

“A nebula a hundred or so light-years away,” I answered. “The brothers Grimnismal think there’s a chance we might find their exotic matter in the vicinity.”

The robot shrugged, an almost imperceptible gesture. “It seems as good a destination to me as any.”

I smiled. “You know, that was pretty much my feeling exactly.”

The birds overhead swooped and darted, and the robot and I sat quietly for a long moment.